


Remember Thou Art Mortal

by JackOfNone



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Community: bloodyvalentine, Creepy, Gore, Necrophilia, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-01
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 20:52:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackOfNone/pseuds/JackOfNone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faranell wants something to remember his best student by.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember Thou Art Mortal

“I want his head back,” Faranell snapped. The assassin opened and closed her long fingers, her black leather creaking with every movement. 

“Why?” she asked. A week ago, he would not have brooked such insubordination from a mere mercenary, but circumstances had changed considerably. Faranell shoved the book on his desk towards the woman in black and tapped a notation on the open page. 

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the many ways that sorcerers can cheat death. Putress is — was — quite a skilled warlock, and we can’t risk his return. I will see every part of his body destroyed, his possessions burnt, and the ashes scattered to the four winds before I’ll consider him truly dead.” The assassin’s pale eyes flickered over the meticulous illustrations, Faranell’s neat handwriting, and finally rested on the words “soulstone”. It was a lie -- the state of a warlock's body had no bearing on the effectiveness of that dangerous practice of splintering one's soul -- but it was a convincing one to a layperson. Slowly, she inclined her head. A nod. A promise. 

“I’ll need you to sign this,” Faranell said. 

* * * 

The assassin was three times as good as her word. She returned less than a week later, with a dripping leather sack that contained no less than three heads — the one she’d been paid for, and the remains of two Alliance heroes who had been conveying Putress’s remains to Stormwind, for some reward or other. He let the assassin keep the other two — there was a bounty to be gotten for them, and times were hard. Faranell paid her a modest sum for her work, calmly noted it in the official Royal Apothecary Society ledgers as a business expense, and turned to look at head she’d left lying unceremoniously on his desk. 

Putress’s eyes and mouth were frozen open in an unflattering rictus of surprise, his tongue lolling dry and rigid against his broken teeth. Faranell reached out cautiously, as though afraid the head might bite him, and tipped it up so it was sitting on the remains of its throat. Faranell held it there by its hair, inspecting every detail — the familiar spot at Putress’s temple where some corrosive liquid had splashed him despite his fastidious preparations, the faint green flush of rot that crept along his lips, and the fresher marks that his final battle had left on him. The stump of Putress’s neck was ragged, with the bone cracked and the flesh hanging in strips from the uneven cut; Faranell, always the professional surgeon, coolly noted that the must have cut off his head while he was still moving. 

Some altogether less professional part of him imagined Putress pinned beneath the boot of an Alliance soldier, thrashing in rage as they hacked his head from his shoulders. Maybe he found the strength to spit one last flesh-blistering curse before the sword burst open his throat, his chemical blood running from the wound like a broken sluice pipe — slow and steady, with no heartbeat to pump it out in spurts. 

“You once asked me how far a Forsaken could go without reaching the second death,” Faranell murmured, bringing the head close as though he were whispering in its ear. “How much damage we could sustain before it finally tipped us back to being a corpse again.” He pulled off his surgeon’s mask to let the air play around the permanent wound where his lower jaw should be, that reminder of how violent his first death had been. “I always thought we'd learn that together someday.” His fingers were long since bare of flesh, so Faranell brushed the palm of his hand over the stump of Putress’s neck, feeling the torn edge of the trachea, the splinters of broken vertebrae that had lodged themselves in his flesh, the rubbery shreds of long-dead muscle. 

Faranell had always thought that he’d be the one to finally help Putress find the limits of unlife. The only question had ever been which side of the scalpel Faranell would be on when the time came. 

He should have killed Putress when he had the chance. Laid him open on his operating table and given him an end fit for the Royal Apothecary Society’s brightest star. But no — something had always stayed his hand, some foolish pity or hope or Lady knew what other thoroughly unscientific emotion he’d felt for his prize student that had caused him to overlook Putress’s rampant pride. Everyone had suffered for Faranell’s foolishness — Sylvanas, the Royal Apothecary Society, all of Undercity…even Putress himself, who certainly couldn’t have wanted to end his career butchered by Alliance grunts under somewhat less than laboratory conditions. 

Faranell’s bony finger slipped into the tangle of veins beneath the stump as he brought the head up to where his mouth should be in an awkward mockery of a kiss. The long-rotted remnants of Faranell’s tongue brushed Putress’s dry lips, sending a shiver of sensation down Faranell’s spine. Faranell took a deep, unnecessary breath just to feel the exposed muscle and rot-corroded windpipe move against Putress’s unresponsive flesh. 

He’d been so very foolish, yes. But foolishness was more addicting, sometimes, than fel magic. 

Faranell had already embalmed the head by the time the Kok’ron guards arrived to stomp around the Royal Apothecary Society’s private laboratory like they owned it. He hid it in plain sight — another gruesome specimen amongst the many that lined Faranell’s shelves, no different from the rest. As the Kok’ron dismantled his prized abominations on the floor and Faranell tried to feign dispassion, he fancied he could feel Putress’s empty eyes staring at him — a stark reminder of where pity and hope and admiration had lead them in the end. 

But every so often, Faranell would break the wax seal around the jar that held Putress’s head, just to remember that he was still capable of feeling foolish.


End file.
